Dialogue is the new buzzword for the European Convention on Human Rights (Convention) system. judges throughout Europe have welcomed and encouraged dialogue, and references to the notion have become commonplace at conferences and in academic writing. Yet although the buzz has intensified, exactly why dialogue can be of added value is not often examined. Nor do those who rely on the notion usually explain how exactly it can be operationalised in a practical sense.

This volume dissects the common-sense realisation that dialogue adds value to the Convention system, within which the State Parties, the Court, the Committee of Ministers (Committee), the Parliamentary Assembly (Assembly), and the Commissioner for Human Rights (Commissioner) interact. The question of why dialogue should occur is answered through an account of the way the system is established and how it functions, and of the developments and reform it has experienced.

The second aim of the volume is to establish whether Convention dialogue does indeed live up to its potential added value. For this purpose, 26 procedures and ‘procedural steps’ are investigated in the light of ‘indicators of dialogue’. The procedures include third-party interventions, the pilot-judgment procedure, and the Committee’s Human Rights meetings. Both the procedures’ dialogic potential on paper and their ‘dialogicness’ in practice are assessed, based in part on interviews with inter alia the Court’s judges, agents representing the states before the Court, and persons monitoring the execution of the Court’s judgments.

This volume will be of use to those who are interested in the notion of (Convention) dialogue and its theoretical underpinnings, and those who would like to know more about Convention-related procedures, the execution of the Court’s judgments, and the role that the Assembly and the Commissioner can play in the Convention system.

Tuesday, 26 January 2016

The Legal Affairs and Human Rights Department of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly has prepared an overview document dealing with positive examples of impact of the European Convention within States Parties. The report, entitled 'Impact of the European Convention on Human Rights in States Parties: selected examples', was written at the request of the Parliamentary Assembly's rapporteur, and in collaboration with the Human Rights Centre of the University of Essex. The nice feature of this overview is that it shows an overview per country, not only dealing with recent cases but also those further down in history. In addition, it also shows some instances of how judgments against one country can lead to reforms in another.

Domestic courts are entrusted with the application of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), as faithful trustees of the rights protected in the Convention.

This book analyses the way in which the domestic courts in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany apply the ECHR and how, applying the Convention, they define their relationship with the European Court of Human Rights. Contrary to what others have contended, the book argues that it is not true descriptively, nor desirable normatively, that the domestic courts approach the ECHR based upon friction and assertion of sovereignty vis-à-vis the European Court. The proper role played by the domestic courts, and the one which they have taken on them to perform in fact, is to apply the Convention in all good faith, building on the principles of the Convention as set out in the jurisprudence of the European Court. But if domestic courts are in a position to apply the ECHR in the first place, it is because the application of the Convention has been entrusted to them by the other organs of the municipal state; in certain cases municipal principles of the separation of powers have an important bearing on domestic interpretation and application of the Convention.

Domestic Application of the ECHR: Courts as Faithful Trustees shows that, through their faithful application of the ECHR, domestic courts can - and do - make a positive contribution to the development of the law of the Convention.

* The Polish Government has published a volume, which is also available online here, entitled The Katyn Crime before the European Court of Human Rights. The volume compiles a whole series of relevant documents which formed the Polish contribution to the Janowiec and others v. Russia judgment before the European Court.